Genesis 1:26 -30
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.
God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 2:18-25
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
From the very beginning, in the creation of man and woman they were united in the flesh by a shared rib. Bone of his bones. She was made to help him as his partner. Both their human bodies and her helpfulness were elements of their more sublime characteristics. Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and likeness. God is Love, God is Light, God is Intelligent, God is Sovereign. He is Reasonable, Emotional, Creative, Rational. God has so many characteristics that many theologians simplify by listing what He is not in order to understand Him better. This is called the apophatic description of God. Both the man and his bride were created to be like God. Not to be what He is not, i.e., selfish, hateful, arrogant, mean, deceitful, et cetera. Those characteristics come from the influence of the evil enemy who lured them away from God, and distorted the holy image of mankind by appealing to their egos and thus turned their sovereignty inward making themselves the center of their world instead of others, instead most importantly, their Creator who should be the center of their focus.
Revelation 19:6-7
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals, crying out,“Hallelujah! For the Lord God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”—Fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.” Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers and sisters who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
Revelation 21:9
One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues said to me, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And then He carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down from out of heaven from God. It shown with the glory of God.
21:22-27 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, (first light) and the Lamb (Jesus) is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations (ethnicities) will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter into it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
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Before the creation of the universe, God spoke light into being out of darkness and void. Saint John the Evangelist said Jesus, the Lamb of God, is light of light, true God of true God, begotten before the foundation of the world. Before Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, Jesus, the Lamb of God was begotten, not made.
Between the creation of Eve, and the splendid wedding feast of the Lamb there lived a helper for God, the Virgin Mary. He planned for His Son, the spiritual light of light, to become human. The Son would not be made of the dust of the earth like Adam and appear out of nowhere, which God could have done. No, He wanted His Son to be born of a human woman. He wanted His son to start as every human does, as a fertilized egg. When was God’s bride (helper) chosen? Could it have been while observing the faith of her parents, Joachim and Anna)? Or generations before, during the days of the beloved shepherd and king, David, their ancestor pleased God with his repentance and humility? Either way, chosen she was. Mary, the blessing to her elderly parents, dedicated to the Lord when weaned, grew up in a holy place; she became a woman pure and humble. She was chosen to be the vessel, the golden chalice of His only begotten Son.
When it was time for the Son to come to earth to heal us and to deliver us from death, Mary conceived this Holy Child by the power of the Holy Spirit. She helped God in His incarnation. In this sense she foreshadowed the Bride of the Lamb, being “wed” to God. No other honor could be bestowed upon a human, even of the highest social or political rank in glory, intelligence, and wealth than to serve the Creator of the universe by giving Him human birth.
Eve, the bride of Adam
Mary, the bride of the God
The Son too will have a bride, a partner and a helper from the future wedding through eternity.
In the Revelation to the Apostle John God said that Jerusalem is the bride of the Lamb of God who is Jesus, who was fully human and fully divine, who took on the sins of humanity, even the grave sins of His enemies, His betrayers, the Pharisees and priests who connived to kill Him and every other sinful person like any sacrificial lamb had to do, but more so because He did it knowingly, and willingly. He asked His Father to forgive them, for they knew not what were doing. Whereas the lamb received the sins of those looking for forgiveness and repentance.
We, who yearn to be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and to be invited to the wedding supper are required to do no less than to love our enemies, those who offend us, hurt us, intentionally or not, because they too probably don’t know what they are doing, perhaps even those who try to kill us. Why? Because, by emulating Jesus, we show ourselves to be one with Him, in spirit and in truth. Such unity and love qualifies us to be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life and to receive that coveted wedding invitation. Not that we just read about these things, or go to beautiful churches and experience inspiring services, but that we actually live out His directions. The saints and martyrs show us that it is possible to overcome evil with good, to be one with Jesus, and thus to represent Him on earth. Jesus requires us to be salt of the living earth, that preserves life here in the war zone of earth from decay and corruption.
Who is this Bride, Jerusalem?
What is her story, the story of the millennia long betrothal period? The Bride is the subject of this book. As in the beginning when the bride of Adam was created to be a partner, his helper, the new holy Jerusalem, Zion, is as physical as the flesh of Jesus Christ’s flesh and bone of His bone, and as spiritual in His righteous characteristics. She is pure and always ready to help her Bridegroom and partner.
To initiate Holy Week, the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates two Bridegroom services, the evening of Palm Sunday, the second day of Creation, when the heavens were made; Jesus, the Bridegroom comes to us from heaven. And the following Monday evening, the third day of Creation when the earth and vegetation were made, Jesus comes to the earth. Jesus comes to humanity's from both heaven and to earth. Both His coming and going are celebrated before His rescuing and restoring crucifixion and His glorious resurrection.
Likewise, the Holy City Jerusalem will come down out of heaven from God. She comes to the new earth, victorious and fully prepared for Her wedding. She comes to receive Her guests, the over-comers.
The Bride, Jerusalem, is place! The old Jerusalem was the place where Abraham obeyed God to sacrifice his long awaited promised son, Isaac, by which he proved his trust. The opposite of what Adam and Eve did. Jerusalem is the place of the Great Sacrifice, the Crucifixion, from where Jesus descended into Hades to release the captives of death, and the place of Resurrection. It is the city where Jesus distributed His body and blood in the form of bread and wine, for the remission of sins and for eternal life. It is where the Holy Spirit was poured out upon men of different languages and therefore ethnicities, to indwell them with wisdom and guidance. The Bride is the City of God, waiting for the marriage feast where she will begin her new immortal and eternal life with Jesus.
How is a place, a person?
Jerusalem is the helper extraordinaire. As place, it is the mustard seed that became a tree that covers the whole earth. It is one out of many. The new Jerusalem will truly be a place of peace.
This is the Bride, my friend. As with one person She contains in her the History of western civilization, beauty, devotion, struggle, faith, blind-faith. As each human being from conception contains within him or her, a multitude of ancestors, so the bride contains within her the souls of the martyrs and Saints. More importantly, Her birth is from the rib of Her Bridegroom, and she always remembers that. The actual Body and Blood of Jesus, dispersed to His betrothed, those who suffered the old earth and won; it heals Her and strengthens Her. He is the source, She is the recipient and beloved. In humility, She receives His love and reflects it back to Him and to the new peaceful world.
The marriage of the Lamb to His bride, will consummate every moment in history leading up to it. The Holy Bridegroom and beautiful Bride will live together as husband and wife in joy, partners, one flesh, helper to Jesus-God forever in peace, because the enemy had been separated from them and all the guests whose names had been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Imagine all the ancestors that make up the infant come alive again and surround the baby, smiling down upon it. One person is made from thousands, like millions of cells that comprise the body. We are one, and we are many.
There is the Bride, Jerusalem, and there are the guests. Who are the worthy guests, the blessed witnesses at the Marriage Feast.
Think of any wedding. There is the Father of the Bride, the mother of the Bride. The Father and Mother of the Groom, their attendants, and the witnesses who are the guests.
The father and mother of new Jerusalem may be old Jerusalem with its watershed events that, as lightening, illuminated and forever changed the darkened world.
Father and Mother of the Bridegroom - God and the ever-virgin Mary.
The Guest List
Matthew 25:31-34
When the Son of Man comes [back to earth for the second time] in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then the King will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,”
Because of their Works
Feed the Hungry
Quench the Thirsty
Welcome Strangers
Clothed the Naked
Visit prisoners
Matthew 25:41
Then He will say to those on the left hand, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
How tragic to live a life on earth only to be excluded from the Lamb’s Book of Life, a.k.a. The guest list to the wedding of weddings, followed by eternal life on the new earth with the Bride and the Bridegroom who is the Messiah, the Christ - Jesus. The revelation to the beloved disciple John, was very specific in identifying those who are not only not worthy of an invitation, but the tragedy is their eternal suffering. There is no reason to be angry at the evil ones who pepper this old earth, for their punishment will be much worse than their most heinous crimes.
Characteristics of the damned souls
Revelation 21:8
But the COWARDLY, UNBELIEVING, ABOMINABLE, MURDERERS, SEXUALLY IMMORAL, MAGICIANS/SORCERERS, IDOLATORS, AND ALL LIARS shall have their part in the fiery lake of burning sulphur which is the second death.
Eternal life on a new earth will certainly be blissful without all those who, knowingly or unknowingly, corrupted God’s image and likeness in themselves.
All that aside, this book highlights only the Bride to inspire and guide us to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, whether in the illustrious Bride, or as blessed guests of the Wedding. All the victorious inhabitants, who will live forever on the planet, the new earth, with many mansions and levels, who were judged to be worthy. Pure Life!
Read it and thrive.
